Hip Homing: A Retraction
Jul. 5th, 2004 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomus
So there I was, in my Barcelona internet cafe, trying to find the 'fobo' area that would remind me, more or less, of every other fobo area in every other big city I'd ever been. There I was, posting a missive entitled Hip Homing in Barcelona. It was abject and disgraceful, and Lord Whimsy was right to burst out with a protest. The interesting stuff, Whimsy thought, would be more likely to happen as a result of accidents, mis-steps, wrong corners, wobblings and perverse driftings through the unknown city.
'Hip homing'; it's a horrible phrase. I would like to retract it here. No hip person would ever speak of 'hip'. My first Barcelona missive verges, deliberately, on the self-parodic. It revels in the revelation of something abject, craven, or at the very least embarrassing; my enslavement to a set of values dear to self-regarding loafers and creative professionals in their 20s and 30s, not to mention a breed of progressively-minded city planners and real estate agents. And yet I was parading my craven capitulation to the values of these 'progressives' because, underneath a layer of shame, my soul contains a bedrock of respect for these values. I'm not ashamed of them at all, and this retraction is no retraction at all.
So I made my purposeful way towards the Calle Doctor Dhu. I knew the Calle Doctor Dhu was the epicenter of charismatic hipness because I'd found a reference to it on a Japanese website, and the Japanese always seek exactly this 'creative yet safe' sort of neighbourhood. You'll find them in the contemporary art museum bookstore. And there they were, indeed, at MACBA and CCCB, the two major galleries the City of Barcelona has placed in the teeming, multi-ethnic Raval district, the twin turbines of a quite conscious urban regeneration effort.
How many times do we hear of some rising urban area that it's funky, young, happening and vibrant, that there are lots of little art galleries, skateboarders and chic bars there? How many times do we arrive, breathless and expectant, in said area to see guys with baggy-ass jeans and carefully messy haircuts with something going on at the back leading expensively cute dogs through the streets? Skateboarders, graphic designers, street artists? We hate it, and we love it. We want to be a part of it, and we want to be indifferent to it, way ahead of its codes and modes. We want to live there, and also say we've lived there longer than the montebanks and arrivistes who now despoil it. We want to monkey, in other words, with the binary real / fake. We want to say that this area, even when constructed, as in Raval, by an elightened city council, is real, or, if not now real, was once real, and, if not now real, then bad and getting worse.
My abject confession recalls an essay I wrote back when I first arrived in New York, Fobo. Fobo is faux bohemian. As the fauxhawk is to the mohawk, so Fobo is to the Bohemian. A threat, and a guilty secret. In the essay I said I was hoping to find 'an apartment in an area which was once funky but is now just expensive, which was once creative but is now plastic, which was once a place of production (studios) but is now a place of consumption (boutiques)'. I don't claim this isn't my real attitude. But clearly there was some self-distance, some irony in my presentation. What made me feel okay about admitting to my craven wish to find the pioneer spirit in so diluted a form was that I was sustained by some perverse doublethink. The fake might be even more real than the real. To be girly might be even more macho than to be macho. The constructed might be more admirable than the spontaneous. And to play by the rules might be even more radical than to appear to reject them. This year's sincerity might be found in exactly the place where last year languished the cravenly fake.
So instead of stressing that one was here long before any of this nonsense started, when only the salt of the earth lived here, when it was truly dangerous to walk home at night, when there was only cold water, drug dealers, a Chinese grocer and a halal butcher, perhaps one could talk about the socialist vision of the city of Barcelona. Perhaps one could talk about rent control, to make sure that the Indians and Chinese who live in Raval are not threatened by rent speculation following on from their area's beautification. Perhaps one could note that the exhibition at MACBA is called Utopias, and that the big show at the Barcelona Forum presents a beautifully-designed case for ethical trading, social inclusion, biodoversity, and linguistic pluralism. That Barcelona is phasing out its bullfighting because of animal cruelty concerns. And that what some see as 'self-regard' might appear to others as the very essence of renaissance humanism, that swaggering south European culture based on the lethal, beautiful combination of self-confidence and money.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-05 05:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-05 09:59 am (UTC)There's a similar man with background of gold and green on the door of the print shop warehouse in which my friend works in Portland, Oregon. It's lovely and seeing that makes my day.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-05 10:41 am (UTC)I'm always amazed by this too. It's only in the 'creative' areas that you see this stuff, but it's the same in every city. You see the same Obey or Faile stuff in Nakameguro, Mitte, Kreuzberg, Menilmontant, Portland, SF... it marks an area as 'ours'. It's territorial pissing. I've been thinking of what alternative could be used for the word 'hip' and the best candidate I can come up with is simply 'us'. This sort of street decoration simply says, 'Uh oh, dude, here's us'.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-05 02:30 pm (UTC)The Magma shop in manchester also supports decorative art/grafitti in this style.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-06 11:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-05 10:43 am (UTC)or do i?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-05 01:41 pm (UTC)everyone finds themselves being partial to certain kinds of neighborhoods, despite best efforts to withhold from a judgemental outlook, and a modern person can't help but apply his/her personal sense of marketing to some behavior they've been thinking on, giving it a brand name and a colorful characterization.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-05 03:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-05 08:10 pm (UTC)-Robyn
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-06 02:09 am (UTC)I felt very much as you do when I was a student. Aberdeen University was a conservative place. My friends were all art students at Gray's School of Art. I kind of hovered between the two. The grass was greener on the other side, but I never crossed over, switched from one to another. 'Hovering' generated useful tension and glamour. I was able to see both institutions as relative, not absolute, and take what I wanted, needed, or even invented, from either.
"Hip" happens: on Fobomonoculture
Date: 2004-07-05 08:15 pm (UTC)Goodness, I feel a bit guilty--like I've just kicked over someone's sand castle (Clearly, a sound Heideggering is too good for the likes of me). I should be quick to note here that I have certainly made more than my share of unsound constructions, so believe me when I say that I appreciate the thought, energy and inventiveness required to formulate them--and mine get slapped about the parlor a bit and subsequently scuttled quite often (6/10 is my current success ratio). The fun is in the making, I always say. Amazed that you would post at all, being on the move. For that you should get a tri-cornered cap tossed in your honor.
I believe you've summed it up quite nicely: "The fake might be even more real than the real. To be girly might be even more macho than to be macho. The constructed might be more admirable than the spontaneous. And to play by the rules might be even more radical than to appear to reject them." Couldn't agree more, my good dandy.
If you ever wish to have a temporary reprieve from fobomonoculture, feel free to visit our bungalow in the pines--no quotation marks for miles. We'll ride highwheels, pet horses and eat blueberries until we pop. In the meantime, remember: "hip" can't touch you if your joy is real!
Affectionately,
Whimsy, an Affected Provincial
Graffitti vs. Tagging
Date: 2004-07-05 08:27 pm (UTC)I can see the merit in the rare piece of truly inventive, properly executed graffitti (including when said mural incorporates the history of the neighborhood in question), but I find the infantile practice of indiscriminate tagging to be an absolute eyesore which usually is visited upon the doors and walls of those residents and shopkeepers who can least afford it, and who often work very hard to keep their working class neighborhoods decent places in which their families might live and work.
Such visual pollution is a novelty only to those who were not forced to grow up amid such things. Any visor-capped suburban wannabe who comes into town for a vicarious "urban" thrill would be sure to get a sound thrashing were anyone to catch them scrawling some obscenity on any beloved Philadelphia landmark, be it Independence Hall or Pat's Steaks. And rightfully so: people have worked hard over the past two decades to make it a livable city again, and with a shrinking tax base, that has not been easy.
If one wishes to mark their "territory", one should start by dressing their bodies well; If they want to prove their grit or resolve, they should try spending their lives actively making something (and themselves) beautiful. Anything less is aesthetic cowardice.
W
tagging vs. families
Date: 2004-07-06 01:46 am (UTC)aside from the jokes, i do basically agree with you though. i have been a graffiti artist for a long time, and have never liked the vandalism aspect of some graffiti... as well as the endless repetition of meaningless logos and slogans... although, it is very fun to see where your friends have been... or remember where you have been.
Re: tagging vs. families
Date: 2004-07-06 02:13 am (UTC)Re: tagging vs. families
Date: 2004-07-06 02:48 am (UTC)Re: tagging vs. families
Date: 2004-07-06 06:01 am (UTC)Re: tagging vs. families
Date: 2004-07-06 12:04 pm (UTC)see what happens when you make insults against the ordinary person, they insult your mum.
have some sense and be nice.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-06 06:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-06 06:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-06 12:05 pm (UTC)if you didn't make this a GIANT reference, it would be brilliant! just have it say, LORD WHIMSY! you're on your way to neighborhood destruction! that hat is very nice as well.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-06 12:39 pm (UTC)My hat was a wicker pot for an orchid in a previous life.
W
Re: tagging vs. families
Date: 2004-07-06 05:57 am (UTC)Re: tagging vs. families
Date: 2004-07-06 12:12 pm (UTC)I find the above almost-repudiation of the notion of community property interesting, in that an unspoken notion of the appropriate is postulated (and seemingly accepted) here between several punters.
In any case, I was nearing the completion of a dreadfully tedious round of weekly shopping recently, and had elected to purchase several cans of white spraypaint, ostensibly to paint a wooden bookshelf for placement in my studio, when my state identification card was demanded by the cashier, who explained that no one under the age of eighteen was permitted to acquire such items from their establishment.
Oh, the cool, clear satisfaction of representative government!
Re: Graffitti vs. Tagging
Date: 2004-07-06 11:59 am (UTC)Re: Graffitti vs. Tagging
Date: 2004-07-06 02:26 pm (UTC)Or perhaps a particularly juicy elephant.
W
Re: Graffitti vs. Tagging
Date: 2004-07-06 03:01 pm (UTC)Re: Graffitti vs. Tagging
Date: 2004-07-12 02:50 pm (UTC)http://www.thelondonpolice.com/
I think they are originally from london but now based in Berlin.. or they were when I last had a thorough read of their website.